5/11/2008

Constructing my own Boulderwall - part 4

This is it !! With the Boulderwall Construction Team (BCT) Tim and Maurice wy me have been busy today at building the major part of my own backyard boulder block (Tripple-B). Firstly a large barge of strong coffee and than trying to get our hands steady during drilling the T-nut holes... Construction sketches on the wall and 'Funk Soul Brother' in the Boombox.The basis I build earlier formed the foundation for the pre-constructed curved part (see previous post) and would at it's turn be the support for the rest of the boulder wall at the right side. Much deliberation about how we would attach the whole thing to my shed, but in the end we found it most easy (and sturdy) to extend my shed by mounting large wooden beams at wich we would construct the frame first. By fixing the plates the structure would become rigid enough to withstand the forces of bouldering and especially dynoeing.

Firstly we had to hammer roughly 200 T-nuts into the curved part before we could mount it to the frame. That actually made more racket than we expected, so wearing ear protection became nessecary. Successively we had to srew on a climbing grip to fasten the T-nuts and make it sufficiently embedded in the wood to withstand the screwing forces once I would placing grips for real.

Once the curved part was secured we could move on building the right side. This part would consist of straight but overhanging plates. That proved to be a little trickier to construct because of the neighbours's fence and the rest of the day Tim and Maurice were coping with it.I became occupied with finishing the left side and Tim suggested I make a door in it. In this way I could stash stuff in it and still be able to get it out...

Another complicating factor became soon an annoying and very expensive 'little' flaw in my construction plan. Half of the plates I obtained by scavenging a lot of climbing gyms for left-overs turned out to be covered in epoxy. It immediately became clear that this played havoc with the saw blades of my electrical jigsaw. Epoxy was harder than the coating of my blades and they became smooth within a minute !! Not having the possesion of an circular saw I had to continue using my whole stock of saw blades and push real hard to make the most of it. Beside that the sawing action released very unwelcome fumes which we took to be toxic. In the end we took turns in sawing as it seemed the most sensible thing to do at the moment.

But finally we made it and a new boulder wall was 'born'.

While Maurice was setting the first routes Tim and I prepared the BBQ an after a while we were contemplating all the work by enjoying some good meat and an even beter beer. Now it is time to pay a visit to the factory of Salvatore Climbits and buy me a nice assortment of climbing grips. To be continued !